In a college football world of style over substance; where it’s more important where you’re going instead of what you’re doing, Klein couldn’t be more content with right now.

Two days before he showed up in Dallas for the Big 12 Media Days, Klein got married to longtime girlfriend Shalin Spani, the daughter of K-State legend and College Football Hall of Famer Gary Spani.

While media in Dallas were busy hyping West Virginia’s move to the Big 12 and Smith’s place among the league’s elite; while they talked about the return of Texas, the sustainability of Oklahoma State and the staying power of Oklahoma; K-State and its record-setting quarterback strolled in and out without much fanfare.

Klein spoke more about his nuptials—“We’re having the time of our lives.”—than how the Wildcats will back up last year. He spoke more about that hitch in his throwing motion—and how he was trying to tweak his mechanics—than how he nearly single-handily made K-State relevant again with a season for the ages.

Like that should be surprising. The big-time program in the small Kansas town that Bill Snyder built over the last three decades has been dealing with this for years. Even when the Wildcats finally got that elusive Big 12 championship in 2003, after Snyder’s reclamation was complete, all anyone talked about was Oklahoma still finding a way to the BCS National Championship Game despite a 35-7 loss to K-State on the last week of the season.

Never has a 28-point win on championship week been so overlooked. Ten years later, it happened again: the Wildcats return 14 starters from a team that won 10 games last season, and were picked to finish sixth in the newly revamped Big 12.

Behind newbies West Virginia and TCU.

“We’ve got a lot of guys on this team who have been told they can’t, or they never will,” said K-State linebacker Arthur Brown. “That builds a fire in you. And when you’ve got a guy like Collin leading the way, with his passion for the game and will to win, you can go a long way.”

How long, you ask? Let us reintroduce Oklahoma State, circa 2011.

The Cowboys couldn’t play defense to save their very season (see: Iowa State), but did enough offensively week after week to force pollsters to make a tough choice on the final weekend. K-State will be just as explosive offensively as Oklahoma State, and probably has better personnel on defense.

More than anything, the Wildcats have Klein: the guy with the bad mechanics and poor throwing motion who set an FBS record for touchdown runs by a quarterback (27) in his first full season as a starter—yet couldn’t be more overlooked.

“Some people think you’re going to be great,” Klein said, “and some think you’re going to be terrible.”

And some people can only play and produce—then prove everything you can’t imagine would work really does.